Angela writes:
Almost 4 years ago, just after my 30th birthday, I was driving my black '76 firebird, when I got T-boned by a bus that resulted in nearly killing me (a mm away... quick coma, fractured skull and a brain injury to boot). I am a photographer, who had been straying from my real love (ART!), driving to an editorial shot for a designer friend, focusing on the world of commercial, so far from that real love... same pot, yet at the heart of it, totally different soup. I also ended up having my left shooting eye, the one right where the fractured skull was underneath, blood glued shut and close to being totally out of commission. Needless to say, it was a little shocking when I woke up in a hospital with a neck brace and a lot of people (family, friends, nurses) all standing around in a half moon staring at me... also needless to say, after a long, slow, mellow recovery, mostly all in my head (aka brain injury), the accident resulted in serious life changes for me. Thankfully and luckily enough, more in my mind and heart than my the body and it's abilities. I ended up with a scar on my forehead, a few other facial scars that are barely visible and everything working just fine. Brain injuries are a strange event, they take a long, non-visually aided (no broken foot to watch heal or explain the pain), time and in the beginning, it's like being a really smart kid while you're brain is busy healing. You can stand, talk, move, hang out at home but you might not remember the intelligent, revealing conversation you just had and simply don't have the brain energy to care for all the walls and conceived realities we build up around our lives, our minds are too busy healing to get into our heads and twist and create messy ideas or concepts. It took me over a year to get back at things fully and since then I have been switching my focus back to my first love, art. This decision resulted in showing at my first "real" gallery, Elliot Louis, and since then, my current body of work, Mirrorface, which I shot while still taking things "easy" in recovery, has just shown solo in 2 collaborating "real" galleries (Grace Gallery and ON MAIN). Thanks to my shock, I have the pride and confidence to say again, I am an artist, first and foremost. We only live once in this world and every second counts.
